If you're gonna be a grump that's ok, but could you be a grump a little further away...

...It's not that I don't love you, 'cause you know I do. Sometimes I'm grumpy, too.

Today turned into a grumpy day for me. Sundays aren't good days to be grumpy. Monday is the perfect day to be a miserable person. At least Garfield won't argue with you about Mondays. Sundays are my re-charge from God to get you through the week days.

My family just changed churches and I have the mixed-blessing of playing the piano. I call it a mixed blessing because I was led by God to play at this church. The pastor, who is basically a brother/best friend informed me that God told him I was coming with him to the new church and I was playing the piano. I laughed. Then I laughed and laughed and continued to laugh...until God told me, he was right. Then the laughing stopped, and the praying began.

It's not that I can't play the piano or even hate it. It's the fact that I have stage fright. I can know the music inside upside down or sideways. Play it perfectly at the house around my family. I get into a church where I know people I really don't know well are going to be listening. I give a lot of people a lot of credit in the fact that when I'm playing piano, I assume they're hearing every note I get wrong. Not only the ones I get wrong, but that they can hear the notes I should be playing, but I'm not. My name is Jana and I have OCD. I am a perfectionist when it comes to playing the piano. Many other things bring out my OCD side, but music is one of the worst.

Our praise team consists of myself, the pastor's son on drums...this kid is dynamite! The pastor on the harmonica...Pick any detective from the 1940's...Picture him in your head...take away the cigarette...less rain...THAT...that right there is him. There is a husband/wife team that play guitar and keyboard. The harmonica is awesome and bluesy, the drumming is way more advanced than I can keep up with on piano. 

The guitarist is amazing. She can play and sings and it's just amazing to see how brave she is and how open she is about her mistakes. She takes chances, depends on God in a way I envy. I want to cower in my corner of the stage behind a piano, embarrassed by my mistakes, thinking for sure everyone that hears me is thinking why does she think she's worthy to play the piano here? Then I look at the guitarist - Dorothy - She is brave. She takes the reigns on any song she can and is offered her. Besides her physical qualities, the thing that is most impressing about her, is she's not the person you see first. God shines through her so brilliantly and is such a wonderful example of who I want to be at the piano. You can tell that she comes second in every way because God comes first and that shines from her face. 

Every week at church, I know I'm going to be playing at least 9-10 songs that I don't know ahead of time and I get to sight-read. For you non-musically trained people, this means I've never seen the music before and I play what I can of it. Normally it's a real slow process, but I don't have a lot of time to mess with it. My sight reading skills are getting better, believe it or not...there's an app for that. But I still feel so beneath her musical skills. I began praying in the beginning that the Pastor was joking and I wasn't supposed to play, then as I began praying for the needs in this new church, God made a clear move in my heart. I would not only play in that church, I would lead the Youth Group. WHOA!! Who does God think I am? Why would he give me this responsibility? I didn't pay the phone bill right this month and got it shut off! Why would you give me the souls of these teenagers to mold? Then I realized the answer before I had the question completely out of my mouth. I'm not going to play the piano or lead youth group or any of the other things in my life. God is going to move THROUGH me to do all these things! Isn't that exciting?! I'm still excited I learned how God speaks to me, but this is just an amazing feeling of hope.

But wasn't I grumpy? Oh yeah, there's that. I managed to offend someone tonight in what had to have been a very jerky comment. I can't even remember what I said because if it was that bad, why didn't I have one of those head-slap moments of  'Why did I say that?' Regardless of what was said, I hurt someone. I can't do anything to try to reconcile this tonight. I'm trying to just remember that God loves me even if I do hop around with one foot permanently in my mouth.

But I'm a Christian? Why do I still have bad days? I know a lot of people that think if you're a Christian the hard part is over and you just have it made. Being a Christian, I can tell you this. The HARD part IS over. God sent his son Jesus to die on a cross for MY sins. Yours, too. He made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can spend eternity in Heaven with Christ. This doesn't mean I won't have bad days, though. In fact, sometimes things get a little harder. You proclaim you're a child of God and Satan is sitting back waiting for one of us to pop up, so he can start attacking. Attack he does. Satan may tempt you in the most effective way, but you've got the Holy Spirit living in your body whispering, urging you NOT to give in. 

Today was the kind of day that after church, one of us was in a grouchy mood and it spread around. Plus, I'm trying to cycle the kids' clothes and put away summer clothes, getting out winter clothes, so between laundry everywhere, grumpiness spreading, My lovely Shiba Inu, Daken, decided to jump through the laundry chute. That one was an experience. Add to that, a money shortage because we're trying our best to tithe the full 10% and lean on God to cover the rest. No gas in the car, electricity has been shorting off and on half a dozen times last night to the point that someone has to walk out to our pole and flip a breaker to turn it back on. Worried about Christmas giving and 2 boys' and a niece's birthday right before Christmas. My husband needs a job, badly. I'm not telling you all this so you feel bad for me. I tell you all this to say that in spite of all this, no matter how down things may be. God has a plan. We won't know it until we look back and can almost map it out why we had to go through this to get to the next plateau.

My God can handle me in a bad mood. My God can handle my being angry with him if I feel it. My God CAN and WILL take care of me. He promised and I believe him. The best side of all to being a Christian and having a bad day? Knowing that at one point, my bad days will forever end. If you don't call Christ your personal savior before you die, the worst day on this earth is the best you'll have to hope for in a much different place.